I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and former Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 3 books and actively review books on this blog.
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Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Earlier this year, I read an article about how sitting is bad for your health, especially women's health. I told my wife about this and she said, "I'd like to try a standing desk." You can actually buy mechanically adjustable height desks, but seriously, if you want to be able to adjust the height frequently, what you want is for it to be entirely motorized. That way, there's no "oh, I won't stand up because it's too painful to adjust the height of my desk" excuse.

Motorized desks vary greatly in price, but I found the ErgoDepot one to be the cheapest of them all. Most people assume that low price = low quality, but the reviews on Ergo Depot were incredible, so I took a risk and ordered one. The first desk arrived with the box torn open and with parts missing, so I rejected the shipment and made the shipper take it back to Ergo Depot. Ergo Depot kindly sent me another one. This one arrived relatively quickly.

The desk assembly was fairly straightforward: screw the base together, and then use a power drill to screw the base permanently to the table surface. It is essential to use a full power drill here. A cheapo drill won't cut it. Then wire together the power adapter to the controller, plug into a power socket, and away you go! There's one minor quirk in the control system, which is that you have to hold down both rocker switches to get the table to go up or down. I have no idea why it's not just one rocker switch instead of two. The desk is fairly sturdy: it is rated for 154 pounds, which means that any monitor (or two) you buy nowadays will fit in the weight range. However, the desk does come with all sorts of warnings saying that if you move it you must lift it by the base, not by the table surface.

There are two entry ports so you can run wires for power, etc to the connectors. They work quite well. The surface itself is pretty great, but the test is in the usability. Xiaoqin loves the desk. She uses it nearly every day, and has come home from work early because her sit-down desk at work made her uncomfortable and she longed for her stand-up desk at home. You can't get a better testimonial than that. I've used it as well and the easy adjust-ability makes it very nice when we switch between users.

What are the flaws? First of all, it seems designed for laptops, not desktops. There's no space under the desk for a desktop tower to reside. Of course, if you don't plan to move the desk, that doesn't matter, just place the desktop on the floor. But given that the desk has wheels, it just seemed like an oversight not to have some provisioning for desktop towers.

If the above sounds like a minor nit-pik, it is. This is a great desk at a great price. Recommended.